Monday, September 02, 2013

Massacre in Camp Ashraf

WARNING: THIS ARTICLE CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES OF DISTURBING SCENES WHICH MAY CAUSE DISTRESS

Camp Ashraf in Iraq was once home to more than 3,000 exiled Iranian members of the Mujahideen-e Khalq (MEK), opposed to Iran's clerical regime. The population had fallen over recent years to about 100. They now number around 50, following a massacre by the Iraqi Army. According to reports, many of the unarmed dead appear to have been summarily executed. Another report says seven of their number have been taken hostage.

His Grace wrote about the Camp a few years ago. That story carried a warning; this one does, too.

Jacob Campbell, Co-Chairman of ASHCAM - a student-founded group to defend the human rights of the men and women of Ashraf City - wrote to His Grace:

"At midnight on Saturday (local time), the Iraqi Army attacked Ashraf City in the Diyala province of Iraq while the residents slept. Ashraf was home to just 100 Iranian refugees (formerly more than 3,000, before the rest were forcibly relocated to the Camp Liberty detention centre last year). The assault continued through the night until 7am, when the armed forces withdrew. The death toll was climbing steadily throughout yesterday, and currently stands at 52 - more than half the population of the city, including six women. Another six women were abducted, and their whereabouts is not known. Photographs of the victims show that many of them were handcuffed and summarily executed by gunshot to the head at point blank range. According to sources, some of the executioners could be heard speaking in Farsi. This suggests that there were elements of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards' Qods Force operating amongst the Iraqi regular forces during the attack. Large areas of Ashraf are reported to have been set ablaze."

"This is more than a massacre," he said. "It's an extermination."

Curtis Sinclair, fellow ASHCAM Co-Chairman, writes in the Times of Israel: "UN inspectors are currently being prevented from entering Camp Ashraf to determine what has happened. Perhaps most shockingly however – considering the deadliness of the massacre – is the denial by the Iraqi government that any such action by the Iraqi Army has occurred at all. State-owned Al-Iraqiya TV has, since 12:40PM local time, been issuing reports claiming that no such attack has happened in what seems to be an attempt to cover up the slaughter."

The Iraqi government, particularly PM Nouri al-Maliki, has repeatedly pledged to liquidate Ashraf City since control of the area was handed over to Iraq by US forces in 2009. This is the third massacre to have taken place at Ashraf since then. It is suspected that Maliki was ordered to carry out this latest attack by Qassem Soleimani, commander of the Qods Force. Soleimani is, according to Iraq's former national security minister, 'the most powerful man in Iraq, without question'.

ASHCAM's Honorary President is Struan Stevenson MEP, and their Patrons include David Amess MP, Lord Alton of Liverpool, the Archbishop of Wales, the Bishop of Leicester and the Bishop of Sodor & Man. His Grace joins with them today to highlight this appalling slaughter.

Funny, isn't it, how 'we must act' in Syria against the monster Assad, but we are content to 'stand by and do nothing' in Iraq, which we helped to liberate from the tyrant Saddam.

Thank you for the warning, Your Grace. I was glad to skip the images: some of us don't need to see pictures in order to know nightmare-inducing reality.

The effects of these chemicals don't have to be immediate, btw. Having worked in hospitals in the mid-20thC, I saw many victims of mustard gas who were suffering from chronic stomach cancer at the ends of their lives.

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And then there was Agent Orange.

We shouldn't worry our sweet little heads about the righteousness of the judgemental, vengeance-wreaking US, then.

The St. Bartholemew's Day massacre.The St. Augustine Fl. massacre.The genocide committed upon the Serbs and other Non-Catholics by the Croats.And, to pre-empt Ardenjm, the predations of Ireton and Cromwell in Ireland.Hiroshima?Agent Orange in Vietnam?The recent drug massacres in Mexico?

We "Christians" make shame the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Horrible post YG.

What to do?

Get our sorry butts out of the Middle East right now.

Either that or colonize the entire place. We've done it before and things were relatively calm while it lasted.

A casual skim through various links reveals this group until recently to had been an officially declared Marxist/Islamist 'terrorist' group, (even a cult) with human-rights violations against their own kind.

I won't shed any tears over the demise of yet another Islamic revolutionary faction - the less the better.

The OP suggest nothing of the possible reason why the Iraqi government killed them - but they are wearing military clothing and flack-jackets - they look like very ex-combatants rather than innocent civilians to me.

It seems people can be very selective in naming those who cause atrocities. It always seems to be the 'other side' who commit them.

Man`s inhumanity to man seems to know no bounds.I fear this will get worse as time goes on, as the Bible says ethnic group will rise up against ethic group and things will get progressively worse until the return of the Lord.Jesus will have to actually intervene to stop humanity totally destroying each other.

A differentiation between killing by CW and killing by other more ordinary means is the beginning of a legitimate national interest. The nation wouldn't be interested in the identity of those killed today. It would rather be concerned with the identity of those who might be killed tomorrow. The interest behind intervention would come from the duty to protect one's own. It would not derive from a duty to uphold justice.

So the question is never "Did a foreign government murder its own people?" That question is utterly irrelevant on terms of framing this discussion. The question is "Does said action by a foreign government directly or indirectly threaten my own people?" That's why it's perfectly legitimate to make a distinction in determining a response. Fifty dead by bullets doesn't necessarily equal fifty dead by gas.

Saddam, Gaddafi, they were both individuals from their nations. Now they are gone, others rise up with the same tribal strains as the former leaders. It's in their genes and it will take decades for even the slightest change in their makeup. They behave just like the original Muhammad.

Tough one this. A slaughter alright, but are we not talking about victims whom if they held the whip, would be carrying out the very same on their enemies ?

Anyone disagree ? Then do look these kindly muslims origin up on Wiki. In Middle East lands, your enemy’s enemy is also your enemy too. This gang of monsters in waiting were partly culled. They got what was due them. The only complaint is they were not totally exterminated.

A bit hard ? Then consider this scenario. They gain in popularity and strength and mount a civil war. Tens of thousands killed this time, not a mere fifty.

Familiar story ?

And for what - democracy ? Don’t make this man laugh. The two races where democracy, or even any hope of it, is a dead duck are Africans and Arabs. Because democracy means not always getting your way, and respecting the democratic process that enables those that do on occasion. And especially, respecting your opponents by not killing them. And don’t fool yourself, democracy at gunpoint ain’t democracy. No, strong arm government is these wretches lot. They can’t and won’t appreciate better…

So, those goodly patrons you mention, and indeed yourself Archbishop, must ask themselves whether by looking out for these fellows, you are in fact contributing to the on going evil done in that part of the world. The road to hell being paved with good intentions, as they say…

To get involved in Iraq again is impractical. It would also be an admission of failure to democratize and civilize the place. So we won't hear much if anything about atrocities from mainstream sources. One can only wonder what horrors await minorities after the final withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Looking at these ghastly images it is obvious that no brotherly love exists within Islam that's for sure. The "religion of peace" is in reality the opposite, but we all knew that anyway from their murderous exploits against Christians in the Middle East and Africa.

Everywhere I read comments like "if they want to kill each other let them get on with it, the fewer there are to trouble the rest of us the better." Islamophobia is becoming fashionable.

Blair has said he wants Cameron to put us in probably to take some of the heat from him over Iraq.

JB

Islamophobia is the propaganda invention of the Muslim Brotherhood which stifles criticism of any thing from deliberately ignoring that gang-rape grooming gangs are predominately Muslims to turning a blind eye to polygamy or having prison toilets that face vaguely in the direction of Mecca.

The term was exploited by their co-religionists in the West and seized upon by lefties to enforce Political Correctness and defend multiculturalism.

Both groups portray Islamophobia as irrational or prejudicial dread/hatred of everything Islamic but many so called Islamophobes are rational people whose only thought-crime is to know more than they are supposed to know about Islam.

It's getting to the point where I don't know what to think about the Middle East any more.

There seem to be suggestions here that this massacre was not simply a case of baddies killing goodies, for all the the people massacred opposed the Iranian theocracy.

I am not fond of the Iranian theocracy myself - nor was I fond of the Shah, or am fond of Assad, but it is not clear to me that all of those who oppose these terrible people are any less terrible themselves.

The changes since Saddam, and since the change of regime in Afghanistan, don't seem to have improved the lots of the women who live there, nor those who reject the ambient religion for any other or none.

It is far from clear, again, that Western interference makes things noticeably better in the Middle East, though it does seem to have improved the situation in the former Yugoslavia.

Still, my bottom line is that I am against any Western interference that is likely to replace one theocracy by another. Successive theocracies make even the Shah look good by comparison, and Mubarak, and even Saddam looks no worse than them.

Now we’re talking. You can overcome racial baggage by education, you know. Let’s try that in London shall we. Teach young black kids not to knife other young black kids. Educate them to overcome their inherent desires...

And then you have the nerve to mention theology. You shameless fraud, how many posts have you put on this site denying theology...

And the whole concept of racial behaviour is stupid is it ? You might want to contact the home office with a view to ending Operation Trident. They, apparently, don’t appreciate they’re getting it wrong....

When you get people in a large group with similar to themselves, they show racial behavioural traits. Now that’s something you cultural Marxists can’t deal with. The old blighter didn’t cover it...

"And then you have the nerve to mention theology. You shameless fraud, how many posts have you put on this site denying theology..."

If I were a Marxist, which I am not, and you or someone else, not Marxist themselves, were to point out, correctly, that something I said contradicted Marx, then that would be legitimate, would it not?

I don't deny that theology exists, or that people get awarded degrees in it, and take it seriously, just as I don't deny that astrology exists, or that people take it seriously.

It is true that I think both theology and astrology out of touch with reality, but it is quite legitimate for me to point it out if an astrologer has miscalculated the positions of the constellations,or if a religious person says something out of keeping with the theology of their religion.

Actually I now realise that if you are a Calvinist, then your theology will survive a claim that explicitly or implicitly denies freewill, but I've gathered that you are not a Calvinist.

Calvinism has problems of its own, of course, and some of them are theological in the context of theologies that demand free will. Or so I have been led to understand.

To think that this man once considered you to be a free thinker, not tied down by other considerations such as ingrained religious dogma and PC shackles, as yours truly is pleased to assert he is not, that you might even just consider an alternative explanation not laid bare in front of you by the herd...

The problem is not race, I know many Christian Arabs who are the most wonderful and Godly people who have a huge heart for the LORD and for lost souls in their nations. They are an example to us all of the love of Christ and the same is true of black africans who love the LORD. The problem is the demonic spirit of hate which is Islam which infects and poisons people. This demonic spirit of Islam is the basis for this wickedness which we see on our television screens, be it in Woolwich, Syria or here in Iraq. It is all the same evil which is Satan. I am so glad that since Woolwich the British people are waking up, at last, to the evil which is Mohammed and his evil religion.

If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, there is every possibility that you have before you – a duck.

Mrs King @ 07:44

One quite agrees. Race is not a problem or THE problem in itself. What is the problem is how advanced the members thereof have become. We can judge advancement using a simple criteria: The attitude towards the welfare of others. Unfortunately, in this area of the world, life is somewhat on the cheap side at the moment. As you say, there are Christian Arabs who are wonderful types, but until the mass rid themselves of the control Islam has over their thoughts and deeds, the prognosis for the future is not good. One does not give up on a people easily, and knowing that humanity is basically the same the world over, they must realise the Koran is intrinsically evil. Now THAT would be an Arab Spring…

Culture changes over time. But only in parts of the world where thought and free will are valued. One suggests that it is those parts of the world where culture doesn’t change and is not allowed to change that have, well, lets call them ‘problems’. You might even consider changing culture an adaption. And if a people fails to adapt, can this be considered a racial trait ? And could this trait be the result of a low IQ in the people ?

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"It hath been found by experience that no matter how decent, intelligent or thoughtful the reasoning of a conservative may be, as an argument with a liberal is advanced, the probability of being accused of ‘bigotry’, ‘hatred’ or ‘intolerance’ approaches 1 (100%).”

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